Dreams and Bittersweet Nightmares
by MapleTreeway
Summary: Set after Milori and Clarion separate but before the Tinkerbell movies. Clarion and Milori continually have these dreams - or bittersweet nightmares - about each other. Rated T and has Milori/Clarion. NOT a sequel to "Everyday At Sunset By The Border".
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: So this here is a little one-shot that popped up in my head. It's a little on the angst, dark, and tragedy side consisting of Milorian (Milori and Clarion). Set after they had to separate but before Tinkerbell. NOT a sequel to my other story. Italics are things that were said in the past, unless used in thought.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing!**

* * *

Clarion opened her eyes to a beautiful sunset, the kind only of perfection that you see only once in your lifetime. The red sun was cradling precariously but gracefully on the horizon of the cerulean ocean, and wispy clouds streaked in various places along the orange and purple sky. If she looked hard enough while standing on the edge of the mountain, Clarion could see a pirate ship bobbing about in the rip tide and some mermaids dance in the warm water, out for a late afternoon or early evening swim. Everything in view was peaceful and Clarion closed her eyes and smiled at it, completely at ease.

Suddenly she felt arms snaking around her waist and her eyes opened and widened, but she relaxed when she breathed in Milori's pine forest scent. She felt him pepper kisses on her head and she sighed, content. A second later she heard him say in her ear, _"I love you, Clarion."_

Breaking her sight from the horizon and ocean, Clarion turned around to reply, but was met with snowfall. She started to shiver and realized she was freezing with cold, when a revelation dawned on her.

She was in Winter Woods and Milori was no longer there.

Gasping with her hand coming to her mouth and eyes widening and partially welling up, Clarion walked away from the edge and swiveled her head left and right with her eyes being met by snow, trees covered in snow, and a few ice patches. Everything was glimmering and looked like crystals, completely peaceful and sublime – except it wasn't really. Not to Clarion anyhow.

Turning around feeling nauseous, Clarion ran through the Woods looking for a way to go back to the border and cross back into her own climate and home. The cold now nipped at face, hands, and feet – which were bare – teasingly, but it was growing fiercer and hungrier to issue out a frostbite with each moment Clarion wasted running through the Woods futilely. The soft breeze became a harsh howl of wind, and Clarion had to flail her arms out in front of her to protect her face. She soon grasped that she couldn't see so she closed her eyes and tried to find her way blindly around.

"_Milori? Milori!"_ Clarion called out every few minutes in hope that he would hear her. After the fifth try she gave up, knowing that her voice would have been lost to the wind.

Stumbling, she ran into a massive glacier and some ice cut into her skin. Clarion gasped from the pain and opened her eyes to inspect the cut in her hand, holding it close to her eyes so she could see. Thankfully it wasn't deep, but her hand had swollen a dangerous blue now. Cradling her hand, she snapped her head up and as she did so, her bun came loose and her hair swirled around her head wildly. Clarion took a deep breath and told herself it was the least of her worries, that her important worries would be frostbite and getting out of the Winter Woods alive. _Maybe I could fly?_ Clarion thought.

Looking back, she found she had her wings and tried to fly. It worked well for a second or two before both of them snapped causing her to fall. She braced herself for the hardness of ice, but was caught by something soft. Clarion opened her eyes and found that she rode on the back of a snowy owl that carried her out of the snowstorm and into the blue sky. She looked at the rider's back and, after a moment, discovered that it was Milori who had saved her.

Clarion gently reached out her hand to touch Milori's back and when she did, she couldn't have been more frightened to know that she couldn't feel anything in her hand anymore. Her eyed welled up again when she saw how badly damaged her hand had become while in the storm. It was now a bleak grey and her fingernails had turned blue, and for a moment Clarion forgot how to speak. Finally she said, "Thank you, Milori."

Milori didn't answer but directed the owl to turn.

"Milori, I'm sorry." Clarion apologized after a silence.

"_You should have been more careful,"_ Milori answered sternly.

"I know, but I was frightened and I didn't know a storm was there and –"

"And what Clarion? You've lost the feeling permanently in one hand while the other is injured badly; you broke both of your wings while trying to fly; and your feet are cut and bruised! Why didn't you call for help earlier?" Milori reprimanded.

Clarion, angered at this, responded, "I did! Believe me I did! I called for help!"

Milori sighed and said nothing more while Clarion looked at her damaged hands in fury. Suddenly the owl jerked sharply and Clarion fell off of it. Screaming, she looked down at the thousands of feet she was free-falling and tried desperately to fly, but it was useless because her wings were broken. She looked up at the owl and saw that it was flying, still in the same direction, and wasn't going to help her, so she fell silent and started to cry soundless tears.

Clarion fell and fell for what seemed like ages, and it wasn't until she hit the hard ground did she scream a blood-curdling scream. Somewhere in the midst of the pain and screaming, footsteps bounded toward her and a voice commanded, "What happened?"

_Milori,_ Clarion thought for a brief moment before pain consumed her again.

Another voice answered, "She was falling from the sky, from the top of the mountain."

"_Clarion! Clarion, are you alright?_" Milori asked urgently.

Before she could answer, her screams were cut short and she fell into the abyss of darkness. Opening her eyes again, Clarion looked at the flawless sunset and felt Milori hold her again. _"I love you, Clarion." _she heard him whisper.

This time when she turned around to answer him, _he stood before her, blushing slightly, and Clarion never thought he could have looked more handsome than he did right then. She looked into his eyes, his brown, beautiful eyes and whispered back, "I love you too, Milori."_

Then suddenly the ground right beneath Clarion's feet collapsed and she fell down the mountain's sheer, rocky slope. Looking back up, instead of seeing the mountain edge, Clarion saw Milori with his wing broken and his face contorted in pain. She saw herself tear up with the guilt that she had broken her lover's wing, but tried to hide it for Milori's sake. Clarion watched, horrorstruck, the worst day in her existence unfolded again right before her eyes, as she fell into a dark and black void.

* * *

She awoke with a start, shivering. Looking back to make sure her wings were still there and not broken, which they weren't, she looked at her hands and found them normal as well, same as her feet._ It was only a dream. It was only a dream,_ she thought to herself over and over again in a form of comfort.

Creeping out of her bed, she went over to her balcony and felt the breeze tug at her nightgown and hair – which had been let loose for the night – gently as if a lullaby. She placed her hands on the carefully-crafted wooden railings and looked in the direction of Winter Woods.

It had been two seasons since they had separated, and the fairy realized that she shouldn't have these dreams - these bittersweet nightmares – anymore. But she still had them, and as much as she hated them, she loved them for they kept a constant reminder of him.

The fairy took a deep breath of the fresh air before looking at the moon and the stars. They glowed brightly and twinkled endlessly. After a moment, she looked back towards Winter Woods and sadness and guilt came creeping back at her. Tears pricking in her eyes, Clarion turned and went back to her room, but not before saying to the night air, "I'm so sorry, Milori. So, so sorry…"

And the stars and the moon glowed and twinkled on.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Alright, so this is going to be something else rather than a one-shot. This chapter is going to be about Milori, as asked by Tangled4Ever who brought up to brilliant idea!**

**Milori knows of Stargazer Lilies from crossing the border with Clarion and this chapter is going to be darker than Clarion's, as Milori was the one who broke a wing **_**and **_**lost his sweetheart.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing!**

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Before Milori even opened his eyes to know what he was doing, he could feel it. He could feel himself flying.

And it felt wonderful.

Before Milori even opened his eyes to see if he was alone, he could smell her flying next to him. Stargazer Lilies. Sweet smelling and beautiful on the outside and in is what she resembled to him.

He was flying next to Clarion again, and he loved it.

"_Open your eyes, Milori." _Clarion encouraged, her voice dancing with cheerfulness and yet still soft.

Nodding, Milori opened his eyes to see her, but the first thing he saw was white. For a second he thought he was in Winter Woods again, but then dismissed the thought because there wasn't any snow or ice. The scent of Stargazer Lilies was still there, but it was distant and Milori suddenly realized that Clarion was no longer there with him.

And he was no longer flying.

Pain and loss swept through him and he tried to figure out where he was, to get his bearings straight, if only to distract him. But the more he tried, the less he knew and it frustrated him greatly because all there was was white. Pure white with nothing more and nothing less, not a streak of gold or grey or blue or black. Just white.

Milori suddenly heard laughter and turned around to try and locate the sound, but the more he did the louder the laughter became. The louder the laughter became, the more it seemed to come from all around the whiteness and tried to close up on him. Milori found it all very dizzying, and he could feel himself swaying and stumbling.

He fell onto the ground a moment later and put one hand on the whiteness, so he could brace himself while kneeling; the other held onto his head, where he felt a headache beginning. Milori closed his eyes and groaned from the pain.

The laughter abruptly stopped – much to Milori's relief – a few seconds later, but suddenly screaming started. Terrified screams mixed with sobs of pain and anguish. Milori whipped his aching face up when he heard that it was Clarion's voice producing the sound and he tried to get up, but fell back onto the ground. "Clarion!" he called. "Where are you?"

The screams grew louder. "CLARION!" Milori shouted, desperately wanting to save her.

The screams and the sobbing suddenly became softer as a sparrow-man began to speak. "She is with me." His voice came from all around.

"W-who are you? Leave Clarion alone!"

A cruel laughter rang out belonging to the mysterious sparrow-man. "You have met me before, Milori." the voice hissed.

Milori whipped his head around this way and that and finally managed to stand, even though he was very dizzy. "Leave her alone! If I find you I'll –"

"You can't possibly harm me, Milori. _And you leave her alone; she shouldn't be falling in love with a Winter Fairy._"

Milori's eyes widened and he clenched his fist and jaw tightly. "Minister of Spring," he growled.

Shaky laughter filled the whiteness and before the Minister could answer, Clarion's screaming and cries pierced through the air so loud that Milori covered his ears to protect his eardrums and hearing. It sounded as if she was going through torture, and she easily could have been from the sound of it. "CLARION!" Milori called. To the Minister's voice he demanded, "What are you doing to her?"

The sound became softer, but still loudly there, as the Minister explained, "I'm not doing anything to her. Not me at all." Another shaky laugh. "Why it is you who is making her cry and scream."

"M-me?"

"Yes you. You left her."

Silence, then, "We agreed to separate, for the safety of ourselves and…other fairies…"

"Did you? Last I checked, it was you who broke her heart," the Minister replied accusingly, and somewhat smugly.

Milori didn't know what to say to that, so he kept quiet. He had been torn and broken-hearted when they had to separate, but he and Clarion both decided it was for the best. And when he thought of that last sunset, _he could still see Clarion's blue eyes - hauntingly dull and heartbreaking to the point that it was so raw from sadness, with the tears clouding over them all the while, that just looking at them was enough to make you cry and feel her pain. _

Milori shook his head to clear his thoughts, but Clarion's eyes kept swimming in front of his face no matter how hard he tried not to think about it. "I-I didn't…I never wanted…I didn't…" he choked out in incomplete sentences.

"What? You never wanted to hurt her? But you have. You never wanted to make her cry? But you did. You never wanted it to end up with her scarred and brokenhearted? You have achieved that, too. All of that you did for the price of what? Your wing. That is what," the Minister of Spring spat out the sentences like they were evil.

"I never wanted it to be this way! I never wanted to lose my wing or Clarion's love! I loved her more than anything else in the world. Do you think that I wasn't affected too? Surely you can clear your eyes a little from all the jealousy and see it was not like that at all. Not in the slightest. None of it was intentional, we didn't mean to fall in love," Milori reasoned.

"'Loved'. So does that mean you are no longer in love with Clarion?" The screaming and sobbing stopped, waiting for Milori's answer.

"I still love her, I still love Clarion," Milori spoke without hesitation.

"But 'Loved' – 'Loved' is past tense!" The Minister's voice raised an octave as he spoke the last two words.

Milori's jaw clenched and he spoke through his teeth, "That's not what I meant. I was trying to prove a point."

The Minister wasn't listening though and spoke throughout the quiet in a much louder voice than needed. "I knew she should have stayed away from you! I knew it was only going to come to a bad end! And you no longer love her anymore! Ha!"

The crying started again, only now it was quieter and much more heartbreaking and painful and raw. There was no screaming to mix with the tears anymore, just the tears themselves. For an instant Milori saw Clarion – whose back was facing him – shaking in tears with her hands covering her azure eyes, before she faded away. He wasn't sure if she had been an illusion that his mind had conjured up, or if she was real and had really been weeping. He wished with all his heart it was the former. Milori didn't think he could bear to see Clarion in so much pain.

"I don't…I don't want to be here anymore…" Milori gasped.

"Why? Is it because you can't take it? Your guilt of relishing in Clarion's pain, is it too much?" The Minister sneered.

Milori, angry that such an accusation was made about him, replied, "No. I never liked seeing Clarion upset!"

"Are you sure about that, Milori? After all, you are known to be…cold."

Milori gritted his teeth in anger but didn't say anything.

The Minister continued, "You are, after all, a pathetic excuse for a sparrow-man…"

Milori curled his hands into fists.

The voice grew louder, "Who, despite his 'best efforts' couldn't keep his first and only love…"

Milori tensed his arm muscles.

"Then ended up breaking his wing doing the most stupid thing in the existence of Pixie Hollow…"

Milori's eyes flashed dangerously.

"…Which was crossing the border where spring touches winter. And the best part about it, is that he was crowned Lord of Winter not even a season before he broke his wing!"

"Stop." Milori demanded harshly.

A laugh answered but the voice carried on fearlessly, "While his lover was only just getting used to being crowned Queen and still recovering from the past Queen's death, he went on and broke his wing!"

"Stop!"

"This of course left her guilty to the extreme, and despairing when they had to split. But he had gotten what he had wanted all along, didn't he? To. Break. Her. Heart. Completely."

"STOP! IT ISN'T TRUE!"

"Oh no? I think it is. Deep down in your cold heart, I think you know the truths to your motives as well as I do. Fortunately for Clarion, I was there for her," the Minister of Spring spoke smugly as if this was some sort of achievement.

Milori noticed the crying stopped and was replaced by joyous laughter as his enemy had said his last sentence. His heart nearly stopped as it dawned on him as to why. "No…" he breathed, shocked.

"Yes. She listened to me, instead of all her other friends. Even Fairy Mary couldn't help her, but I did. I comforted her, I let her cry on my shoulder, and in time she came to trust me more. More. Than. You. And in many other ways also did we become…close."

This kind of pain that the Minister of Spring was inflicting upon Milori wasn't the physical type; it was the emotional type, the type that hurt far worse. In front of him, he saw images and scenes consisting of Clarion and the Minister of Spring, each one worse than the next. In one of then he saw the two dancing and having a wonderful time together like friends, but if he looked close enough, Milori could see compassion show in Clarion's bright blue eyes directed towards her dance partner. In another one, Clarion was crying and the Minister held her close and whispered comforts and sweet nothings in her ear. There were more, and all of them made Milori feel sick to his stomach, except for one. That one scene made him feel the whole of Neverland come and crash upon his body and kill him, and it consisted of Clarion kissing the Minister with fervor so intense it hurt just to look at.

And the Minister, who was kissing her equally as passionate, was slowly slipping off her dress…

Milori felt as if the world had stopped and he suddenly couldn't breathe. The whiteness was too bright, the room too dense, the laughter too much, and the air too stifling. "No…no…Clarion…Clarion wouldn't…she – I thought – she – isn't – what – no, no, you – you're tricking…she – I thought – I need…I need…" Milori tripped over his own words, in a daze, just as the scene shattered.

"Need what?" Asked the other sparrow-man asked innocently - except he wasn't really, not in Milori's eyes at least.

"W-why show me this?"

"Because I can, and you deserve it. You were Clarion's first love, but not her only."

The winter sparrow-man finally broke and swung his fist into the whiteness, which caused it to smash into a million pieces and leaving him to float about in a dark void. Scenes of his time with Clarion by the border played in front of his eyes, ranging from the first sunset, to the last. All the while orchestral music played somewhere in the distance, and it sounded as if the piece was capturing someone going insane.

Milori had no idea how long he floated there, it may have been days or weeks for all he knew. He hadn't heard a single voice since the whiteness and wondered if the music – which had been repeating itself – was starting to make him insane when he heard a familiar voice call, "_Milori? Milori!"_

_Clarion,_ Milori thought as his eyes widened when the void gave way to a patch of Stargazer Lilies and he was looking at Clarion's concerned and frightened face. He suddenly felt a pain in his wing and when he looked back he saw that it had begun to swivel with heat. Milori turned his head back to see his beloved, but instead saw a smug looking Minister of Spring.

"I told you so," was all he said before stamping his foot in Milori's face causing immediate darkness.

* * *

He woke up shaking uncontrollably. Getting out of bed – with difficulty on account of how weak his knees felt – he went to the window and looked out into the snow with a pounding headache. But he was used to these headaches, they occurred much more often than not these days since he had been crowned Lord. It was supposed to be normal.

His mind kept drifting to the scene in the dream – no, it was more of a nightmare – with the Minister and Clarion, and he couldn't help but wonder if it was true. Part of him, the sensible part, told him that it was merely his imagination running wild because he no longer could be with her. While the other part, the not so sensible part, told him it was highly likely and that she had forgotten everything about him already.

Milori shivered unconsciously before deciding he was too reeled up to do anymore sleeping. Turning around, he walked toward a hanger and attached his cape to his shirt. He then whistled for his owl to come and as he waited, he went back to the window and forlornly said, "If only, Clarion. I'm sorry."

The chirp of an owl a few moments brought him back to the present and he mounted it, riding out into the night.


End file.
